The transmission of information through virtual, non-personal methods is a constant in today's modern world. A majority of the data being transmitted is considered by those sending or receiving it to be confidential and, in some cases, to be of such importance that it has led to frequent attempts to fraudulently obtain that information. This has become an increasingly serious concern for governments, businesses, and individuals.
Currently, the general accepted method for securing data is the ubiquitous “password”, “passphrase”, “PIN” and many other synonyms. Passwords are very often kept alongside the data it is meant to secure, or with the individual owner of the data. These and other user habits represent major flaws in password-based security measures.
The password is a static piece of data that is being transmitted repeatedly, and thus presents an easy target for theft. Or, systems that require frequent changes to passwords promote predictable patterns by the user, or forgetfulness and loss of the passwords, which results in inefficiency and added expense for password-recovery measures.